Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Tralalalalala!

First of all, if you read this today, make sure you head over to Google and play with their cute Gumby themed title. A blast from the past for all us 90's kids :)

Second of all, hooray! It's Wednesday ^_^ My co-teacher last year, the amazing Ms Shin, always used to remind me that Wednesday was "Hump Day", but me being daft took a couple of weeks of this to catch on what she meant, seeing as her English was excellent and I knew it couldn't mean what it sounded like to me. So even though this semester my Hump Day is actually a kind of camel hump of Thursday AND Friday (specifically classes 2-6 and 2-8), I still always remember her saying it to me. These days, Wednesdays are actually my chilled out day - I don't start until 9.30 (to make up for teaching extra hours within my 22 teaching hours but that are beyond my contracted 8 hour day), I only have two classes, one of whom is the best and smartest class of first years (actually... pretty much the ONLY consistently good first year class) and also boys so they actually talk and get involved, and one hour of after school class. Mind you, I do have four classes back to back on Thursday morning, ending with the dreaded 2-6, so it kind of evens out. And then bellydancing tonight, which always turns out to be fun, despite my perpetual reluctance to leave my house at night once I've gotten home and flopped on my bed.

Anyway, just some fun for today, I thought I'd share a music video of one of my new favourite songs (not more Rain, don't worry ^_^) that I tried singing with Michelle last night at noraebang (노래방 or karaoke) and that we actually did ok with. Michelle is much better with K-pop stuff than me (I don't really even listen to the lyrics of songs in English, I just pick up on the mood and then my mind tends to wander rather than actually concentate on music that I listen to) but it's not as fast a song as most so if I can actually force myself to listen I think I can get this one. And also, the music video is awesome fun to watch! "Breathe" by Miss A.

Also on my list of Korean songs (that I can remember right now) to master at the noraebang are:
- Big Bang "하루하루" ("Haru Haru")

- 비 (Rain) EVERYTHING!!! ^_^ Especially "난" ("I")

- Infinite "BTD" ("Before the dawn").

Songs I can actually sing semi-decently:
- "샤방샤방" ("Shabang Shabang") - a Korean trot song, meaning a kind of classic that catches or creates a certain mood that most people know. This is about a sexy woman with a S-line body and a V-line face, like the Korean parallel to Sir Mixalot's "Baby Got Back" (aka the "I like big butts" song).

- 비 (Rain) "I Do", "널붙잡을노래" ("Love Song")

- MBlaq "Y"

- Miss A "Bad Girl Good Girl"

- f(x) "뉴 예삐오/NU ABO"

- GD & Top "High High"

- GG (GD and 'Great Park' {박명수}) "바람났어" ("I cheated")

- CN Blue "사랑빛" ("Lovelight"), "외톨이야" ("I'm a loner")

- 2NE1 "Go Away" < I only know this one because some of my students translated it for a class activity last year. I hate the music video though and the terrible English lyrics and will refuse to sing it as much as is possible to resist it's catchy beat.

- I also feel like I could now sing most of 2pm's "Hands Up" purely by osmosis, that is, going to noraebang with Michelle who sings it as often as possible.

- Fly to the Sky "Missing You", "Sea of Love"

- Se7en "와줘", "Come Back To Me" (the first two are the same song in Korean and then in English), "욕심", "Girls" (ft. Lil Kim, in English) and "난알아요" ("Nan Arayo/I know"

Songs I've given up on ever getting the whole way through :(
- 김현정 (Kim Hyeon-Jeong) "B형 남자" ("B-type Man")

- 백지영 (Baek Ji-Yeong) "사랑안해" ("I won't love {again}")

I haven't tried singing a lot of the older songs on that list for a while though so I've probably forgotten how to do most of them. Also, when I say "I can sing these" I don't mean in a way that holds me accountable for actual accuracy of pitch :D A lot of these songs are also my favourites to listen to and are not a bad place to start (although by no means comprehensive and of course skewed completely to my own tastes) if you are curious about what Korean music is like.

Oh and I showed my good class *N Sync's "Bye Bye Bye" yesterday for a listening activity and they thought that they looked like the idol group ShiNee (pronounced 'Shiny'). Sadly, I only heard that eavesdropping in Korean so I couldn't say anything, but I think they would have been flabberghasted to know that *N Sync pre-dated their precious ShiNee by a good 15 years or so. They were amazed to see Justin Timberlake though in his "bubble hair" phase (as they put it). What do you think? ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ